Dinitz in U.S. for 10-day Visit

November 29, 1972

JERUSALEM (Nov. 28)

Simha Dinitz, director general of the Prime Minister’s office, left today for a 10-day visit to the United States with his appointment as Israel’s next ambassador to Washington considered a virtual certainty. Dinitz, Premier Golda Meir’s political advisor, will attend functions of the United Jewish Appeal and the Israel Bond Organization while in the U.S. The Cabinet is expected to formalize his appointment this week or next.

The Cabinet will hold a special session tomorrow for a briefing by Ambassador Yitzhak Rabin on the status of U.S.-Israeli relations. Rabin, currently on a private visit here, is expected to return to Washington by the week-end. On a television interview last night, Rabin said the U.S. was concentrating on trying to bring about negotiations for a partial Suez settlement between Israel and Egypt because the gap between the two countries is still too wide to hope for an overall settlement at this time.

But the envoy said he thought Egypt was reluctant to agree to a partial settlement and was still trying to persuade the Soviet Union to urge the U.S. to put pressure on Israel to withdraw from the administered territories in advance of negotiations. Rabin said he didn’t think the U.S. would try to impose a settlement on Israel.

The ambassador denied that he had unduly interfered in the American Presidential elections as charged in some quarters last month. He was accused of making statements designed to persuade American Jews to vote for President Nixon. Rabin said it was his duty as Israel’s Ambassador to point out to Americans the implications for Israel of the various policy platforms of the candidates and to let the voters draw their own conclusions. Rabin also dismissed as “a lot of rubbish” recent reports in the Israeli press of a row between him and Foreign Minister Abba Eban.